Katie’s blog spot: Chicken Sweaters

I am sure some of you have recently seen all the news stories about the group knitting sweaters in order to keep chickens warm.  My simple idiom?  To each your own.  But, I have seen enough coverage this week that I really want to dispel some things for people who are thinking about owning chickens, or are new chicken owners.  My words are definitely not gospel, let me reassure you.  After owning chickens for a number of years, I am still making mistakes and learning from them.  And I will continue to learn as long as I am a chicken owner.

 

So, how did things play out when we first became chicken owners?  It was simple…I came home from work, walked into the house, and heard strange noises coming from the kitchen.  When I entered the kitchen to investigate, low and behold, there sat a plastic tub with cute fluffy babies who were chirping away, hopping around joyfully, and frequently suddenly stopping to pass out and sleep on top of each other from exhaustion.  I turned to my husband, who proudly announced that we were now chicken owners.  And let me tell you, those day old babies were the cutest thing I had ever laid my eyes on!  It was October, starting to get chilly outside, and we had nothing prepared for their sudden arrival (including a coop).  so we kept them inside, all warm and snuggly, while we began plotting out how to build a chicken coop.

Building the coop was a big adventure, and I had a lot of fun helping my husband create a space for our new fuzzy friends to live in.  We had a mostly unused wooden shed on our property, and built the chicken coop inside of it.  It offered storage for their food and supplies, as well as an extra layer of protection from the outdoor elements.  It also offered a great space to create an outdoor run that we could attach to the shed and would offer pretty decent protection from predators.  Baby chicks require lots of warmth.  Think sauna warmth. So, we kept the babies in the kitchen, in their plastic tub home, under a heat lamp until they were big enough (and fully feathered) to transfer to their new outdoor home, which occurred when they were approximately 5 weeks old.  Baby chicks will tell you when they are too warm or two cold.  If they are all gathering under your heat source, they are cold, and if they are as far away from the heat source as possible, they are too warm.  Everything went swimmingly during the fall and winter.  And, we had our investment returned to us in the form of eggs, 6 months after our adventure began!

 

Fast forward into the first winter. I must confess, when I first became a chicken owner, I had a lot of fears and worries about what would happen to the girls during the winter time.  We live in Minnesota, and winters can be pretty harsh and especially cold.  Like any new chicken owner, I diligently researched the proper way to raise chickens and the best methods of  keeping them happy and healthy.  After reading many articles, I still didn’t believe what I was reading.  I freaked out when the temperature dipped below freezing.  Are the girls warm enough? Are they going to get sick?  My wonderful husband also tried to reassure me that the chickens would be fine.  In my usual stubborn fashion, I insisted on installing a heat lamp in the coop.   I was thinking “these poor chickens are going to freeze to death”!!  Well, having a heat lamp in the coop only lasted the first winter we owned them.  Why?  For us, the benefits of not having a heat lamp exponentially outweighed the risks of having them.

Chickens produce quite a bit of heat without human intervention.  They fluff out their feathers to trap air in-between, like the insulation in your walls, and that keeps their body warm.  Low drafts and plenty of ventilation are essential to keep chickens warm as well as keeping the moisture content low inside the coop, which is critical in the winter time.  We decided against using a heat lamp because of two factors.

 

1. Chickens can easily get sick or die from a sudden drop in temperature.  Imagine what it feels like when you are all bundled up and you walk inside after being out in the cold for an period of time.  After a while you are too warm, right?  Now, walk back outside after being too warm and stay outside for an extended period of time, does it make you feel a lot colder much more quickly?  I’m shivering just thinking about that!  Now picture a chicken doing the same thing, except with a much lower immune system than what humans have.  If you have a heat source that uses electricity, what happens if your electric goes out in the middle of the night while you are sound asleep?  Shiver!
2. There is a fire risk associated with using heat lamps in the coop. It can get pretty dusty inside a coop.  Floating particles or flapping wings can and have started heat lamps on fire.

 

After I survived the first winter (some of the chickens did as well), I began to believe everything I had been reading, because I had experienced it first-hand. Although we did lose some chickens to illness, it wasn’t due to how we housed them.  We have continually made modifications and improvements to both our coop and run since we began, because we are learning as we go.  We decided against using a heat lamp going forward outside (babies need to stay warm and we keep them near us and we monitor heat sources), and in the subsequent years, have not had any chickens with any major frostbite, no illness and no weather related deaths.

Are you asking yourself yet, what does any of this have to do with chicken sweaters?  My answer is everything!  My parents taught me to be kind to others, and while I stumble sometimes, I try very hard to be kind and give back to others.  I’m sure I can be better at this and give back more than I do, but I do try.  As I have been seeing the chicken sweater story start to spread like wildfire on social media, I can only give high praise and applaud others for doing the same.  It is truly commendable when people give back to others, and I have no ill will for doing so.

 

What I do want to convey is chickens are birds.  In all my years of my enthusiastic bird watching, I have never witnessed a cardinal at my feeder donning a sweater, or a chickadee wearing a turtleneck.  But, I see plenty of both birds all winter long when it is sub-zero, simply because they adapt in order to survive.  Chickens do the same folks.  They fluff out their feathers like insulation, but sweaters actually prevent them from doing just that.  Your chickens will be colder, and more at risk to the elements wearing a sweater than not.  I know, I know, chickens look pretty adorable with those cute sweaters…unfortunately it is actually pretty harmful to wear them. They instinctively protect themselves from both weather as well as predators, and wearing a hot pink argyle diminishes their ability to do both.

 

My intent with today’s blog is not to preach to anyone about what they should or should not do as a chicken owner, as I said at the beginning “to each your own”.  I only want to convey a bit of what I have experienced thus far as a chicken owner with the hopes that I will continue learning in the years to come.

I would love to hear from you about your chickens and experiences in the comments section.

Until next time, happy homesteading!

 

Katie